“Oh, I see you are one of these antiquarian gents. If you would really like to see her....
“Well, if you are curious, how would you like to hear of the murder I did twenty years ago? I tell it to everybody, and they don’t seem to believe me, so I will tell it to you....
“I spent a night in the workhouse and when I got out in the afternoon I was so hungry that I could have eaten the master, if he hadn’t been the ugliest fellow I ever saw, like a fancy potato. Walking didn’t cure my appetite, and all that day and night I didn’t have a bite. Perhaps I got a bit queer and I went on walking until I got near to Binoll in Wiltshire where I was born. That is a fine country. My old woman and I have slept in violets there many a time in April. When I got there early in the morning on the second day I thought I would go into a copse I knew and pick some bluebells there, partly for old remembrance sake and partly to make a penny or two in Swindon, but I didn’t much care what. Well, as I was picking them—God! how everything did smell and I felt like a little boy, I was enjoying it so, and putting my hand into all the nests and feeling the warm eggs—Lord! what a fool I be—I thought I would go to sleep. There was such a nice bit of moon in the sky, with the rim of the cup of it uppermost, which means that it keeps the rain from falling, but if it is upside down it lets the water out and you may know it will rain. There was a regular old-fashioned English thrush saying: ‘Bit, bit, slingdirt, slingdirt, belcher, belcher, belcher,’ and I went on picking the flowers. All of a sudden I saw two fellows sitting just outside the wood with their backs to me. One of them was a big fellow and we passed the time of day and he said he had done a job lately and was not in a hurry to do any more. The other was a little white-faced man such as I can’t away with, and he said he was looking for a job and trying to get his strength up a bit. The big fellow motioned to me, meaning that the other had got money about him; so I agreed, and nodded, and he stepped back and hit the little fellow a good blow on the head. I threw away the flowers and we dragged him into the wood. He had ten shillings on him and we took half each. He looked very bad, so the other fellow said: ‘We had better put him away,’ and I said; ‘Yes, he may be in awful pain, such a white-faced fellow as he is.’ So we knocked the life out of him, and the other fellow went off Marlborough way and I went into Swindon and had such a dinner as I hadn’t had for weeks, rabbit and new potatoes and a bit of curry.... Did you ever hear about that?
“Get on my mind? Why, I never meant the fellow any harm and I filled my belly.
“Can you tell me where there is a lone road where I can make a bit of fire? I don’t like the dust and noise of these motor cars.” ...
Away he went, halting a little, and yet, from behind, having an absurd resemblance to a child, which his cheerfulness reinforced.
Later in the evening, I found him just awakened from his first sleep, near a dead fire that had been no bigger than a pigeon’s nest.
“What a country this is,” he said indignantly, but with good humour.
“There are not enough sticks in this wood to warm the only man who wants them. I suppose they use all the firing to keep the pheasants warm. Hark at them! If I was a rich man I wouldn’t keep such birds....